Someone cruel once said: "Politics is showbusiness for ugly people." That got me thinking. Hollywood awards its Oscars; why should not Westminster celebrate its Uglies? As a turbulent year in politics draws to its close, it is time to mark the triumphs and the tribulations, the hits and the flops of the past 12 months by handing out some prizes.

The first winner to totter down our stained red carpet is Vince Cable. The business secretary was a late but nevertheless outstanding entry for our There's No Fool Like An Old Fool award. Picture the scene in Dr Cable's constituency office on the fateful day. Two young women walk in off the street to seek from Vince his private opinions about the coalition. Is there a twitch in his antennae for trouble? Does he raise his guard? Does he for a moment wonder whether the femmes fatales might be undercover reporters? No, there is a meltdown in the brain of the great sage and evaporated is every ounce of the commonsense and judgment for which he was once hailed. The recorder concealed about the persons of the two honeys is taking down every word as he brags that he will win a "war" with Rupert Murdoch and has a "nuclear weapon" in his pocket so potent that he can bring down the government. The judges hope this award is a fragment of consolation for Dr Cable now that he finds that the person he has nuked is himself.

Joining him on the winners' roster is another Lib Dem, David Laws. Earlier in the year, he set a new record by lasting just 10 days in the cabinet before being forced to resign. He is the winner of our There's No Fool Like A Young Fool award for thinking it could be acceptable to be the treasury minister presiding over a ferocious spending squeeze having wrongly claimed from the taxpayer many thousands of pounds in expenses.

Rounding off this section of the awards ceremony, we come to our There's No Fool Like A Greedy Fool award. The judges found it hard to choose between two former Labour cabinet ministers who were caught boasting to another female undercover reporter about their ambitions to gain profitable consultancies. Geoff Hoon wanted to turn himself into "something that, frankly, makes money", while Steve Byers described himself as "a bit like a sort of cab for hire". Unable to choose between the desperate duo, the judges have decided to give them the award jointly.

No one could fairly accuse this column of party political bias. So, we had better look for Conservatives worthy of an award. And we find the first deserving Tory in Nicholas Winterton who objected to MPs no longer being able to claim first-class rail travel on the grounds that he didn't want to share a carriage with standard-class passengers because they were "a totally different type of people". He picks up the They Still Don't Get It award.

The judges also want to honour William Hague. He is the winner of the We're All In This Together award. What the foreign secretary was specifically in was a hotel room together with a young, male aide. This revelation prompted a lot of malicious gossip about why the multimillionaire Mr Hague would want to spend the night with a man who was not his wife when he could so easily afford to book them separate bedrooms. The true explanation is actually quite simple: William Hague is a Yorkshireman.

Those who have been paying attention will recall that the year began with questions about the character of Gordon Brown. To answer charges that his nightmarish paranoia, volcanic temper and brutality towards colleagues were the despair of the cabinet and ruinous for the government, Number 10 fielded some odd choices as apologists for the then prime minister. Our Shameless Hypocrite award is won by John Prescott for denouncing the writing of books about Labour when he had already published his own memoir, his wife had knocked out one too and both had sold the serial rights to the Mail newspapers which are Labour's greatest enemies.

The Pants On Fire award honours outstanding levels of political dissembling. The judges acknowledge that it is hardly news that Peter Mandelson has a slippery relationship with the truth, but they still feel that he deserves recognition for excelling himself this year. Confronted with the revelations about Gordon Brown's character, Lord M denied it all even as he was furtively assembling his own hiss-and-tell which would describe Gordon as "hair-raisingly difficult", "a nightmare" and "mad, bad, dangerous and beyond hope of redemption". Even by the maestro of mendacity's standards, this was breathtaking. He is now understood to be establishing an "international consultancy", which is what ex-cabinet ministers do when they can't find anyone who will give them a proper job.

The Money Can't Buy You Love award is presented to Michael Ashcroft, the billionaire from Belize, who infuriated nearly everyone but surprised hardly anyone when he finally confessed that he had continued to shield his vast overseas earnings from full UK taxes in the 10 years since he obtained his peerage. It turned out – and this made the judges very pleased – that money can't buy you elections either. For all the dosh poured into marginal seats by Lord Cashcrop, the Tories could not win themselves a parliamentary majority in May.

Which brings us smoothly to one of our big ones, the award for Opportunist Of The Year. The judges hope that David Cameron realises that this award is meant to be flattering. In many respects, the Tory leader fought a terrible election campaign, which could have had an even more disappointing outcome for the Conservatives had not Labour's effort been so abysmal. Against an elderly and disunited Labour government with a very unpopular leader who had presided over the worst recession since the 1930s, David Cameron added fewer than four points to the Tory vote share achieved by Michael Howard five years previously. And yet with that ruthless and pragmatic eye for the main chance which is particularly admired by the old Etonians on our judging panel, the Tory leader then secured himself the parliamentary majority that the voters had withheld by making his audacious "big, open and comprehensive offer" to the Lib Dems to join him in a coalition. Since then, Teflon Dave has somehow managed to float above all the unpopular decisions made by his government while the Lib Dems take the hits in the headlines, the polls and on the streets. Simply brilliant.

We were hoping to have one of the prime minister's predecessors present at this awards ceremony. Tony Blair was booked, but his office cancelled at the last moment, pleading a diary clash with a speaking engagement at a convention of small arms' manufacturers in Uzbekistan. But we don't bear grudges. So, even in absentia, Mr Blair gets the Too Much Information award. Obviously not for his testimony to the Iraq inquiry, from which there was no new information at all, but for his memoirs. Our panel agreed with everyone else that the world could have done without the bad sex scene. ("On that night, I needed that love Cherie gave me, selfishly. I devoured it to give me strength, I was an animal following my instinct…"). But it was page 544 – when the former prime minister invites us to join him on the loo – that most had the judges screaming for mercy.

Time now to unveil the Assassin Of The Year. There could only be one winner: Ed Miliband knifed not just his brother, but also Nick Brown, Gordon Brown, Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper. The panel were particularly impressed that the first killer panda ever to lead a major British political party could keep a straight face when he said: "I love you, David" even as he walked over his older sibling's corpse to claim the Labour leadership.

This ceremony would not be complete without recognising Nick Clegg and his extraordinary rollercoaster of a year. But which award would be appropriate? The judges found it very hard to agree. Panellists who remain sympathetic to Mr Clegg argued strongly that he ought to be acclaimed as Politician Of The Year. Did he not steal the leaders' TV debates? Has he not brought Liberals into government for the first time since Churchill's wartime coalition more than 60 ago? Is he not now burnt in effigy on the streets? Even the latter is a truly historic achievement. Never before could anyone be bothered to set light to a Liberal leader.

Judges who sympathised with his predicament while questioning his judgement preferred to make Mr Clegg Kamikaze Of The Year for betraying his party's pledges on student tuition fees. More hostile members of the panel were having none of that and argued that the appropriate award was Traitor Of The Year. In the end, there was only one way to resolve the differences between the panel and it was a very Lib Dem way. The judges decided to give Nick Clegg all three awards.

Happy New Year. I'd like to wish you a prosperous one as well, but I don't think you'd take me seriously.